


Tragoedia

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Sacrifice, Artistic Liberties Taken, Character Analysis, Friendship, Gen, Headcanons and Reimagining, Healing, Homestuck 2: Beyond Canon, M/M, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Homestuck Epilogues, The Homestuck Epilogues: Candy, basically I make a whole lot out of a throwaway line, mentions of - Freeform, not exactly canon compliant but still referencing/interpreting specific stuff from "canon"?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25491634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Time for a goat-song — it’s a tragedy.High Priest Makara’s on trial.
Relationships: Gamzee Makara & Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara/Karkat Vantas, Jane Crocker/Gamzee Makara, and hinted possible pale (despite everything), with mentioned toxic
Comments: 14
Kudos: 23





	Tragoedia

**Author's Note:**

> “You were talking soda pop, you talked it quite a lot! The opinions that I do not give are the opinions I ain’t got. So let it drop, let it all drop. Let it all... fall... off.” — “Spitting Venom,” Modest Mouse

  1. _Before the Show_



Thousands of years ago, on the ancient, blown-to-pieces Original Earth, tragic plays were performed as rituals, as screaming prayers, as social catharsis. 

It happened oftentimes at the Theater of Dionysus, around someplace called “Athens” that had been meteor-ed into oblivion just like everywhere else; the City Dionysia festival generally fell sometime in late March or early April, and yes, Rebel Commander Karkat Vantas obviously knew what those human month names meant by now. Here on Earth C, maybe there were people who still celebrated something like the City Dionysia... Karkat didn’t know. It was a big fucking place. He _did_ know about the vague concept of it all a little too well, given that a young purpleblood troll called Euripi Maenad liked to rumble about it in her deep, mud-and-velvet voice over meals in their subterranean mess hall. Monologuing in dazed-eyed poetry seemed to calm her down, and she was as much a part of the rebellion as anyone else. Euripi had been studying Original Earth Classics at a human university, until Jane Crocker’s pro-human legislation changed her world. 

Karkat had started listening when Euripi talked about those ancient tragedies because he heard the word “goat.” It was stupid and embarrassing, and he sure as hell wasn’t gonna tell anyone that particular detail, but it was true. See, whenever Karkat heard the word “goat,” he found his insides twisting, nowadays... sometimes his teeth clenched, sometimes his palms got sticky and hot. Occasionally, people were really talking about _seagoats_ , see... about the twice-holy redeemer with bells on his shoes and crooked goat horns, who’d had a seagoat Lusus back when Karkat was his best and most favorite friend on Old Alternia. When people talked about goats, Karkat remembered Gamzee Makara, now a High Fucking Priest of his own redemption arc-based religion, now Jane Crocker’s clownish hate-lover and relentless, doting shadow. Karkat had been trying for actual decades not to feel anything at all, when people said Gamzee’s name. 

And that... that had been going great.

So, Euripi said, “goat,” and Karkat flicked his one good eye over to watch her a little more carefully. He took a long, careful sip of lukewarm cave water; the drippy moss and graffiti on the walls around them seemed to wriggle a bit in the unsteady light. Wiring was shit down here. Most things were shit down here, but they’d scraped together battle ships and weaponry. That’s what mattered. Euripi‘s shoulders were soft and strong, and she had ivy tattooed up her wrists, like the plants were sprouting out of her purple veins. She wasn’t actually talking about Gamzee Makara, this time. She said the word “Tragedy” came from “Tragoedia,” which could mean “goat-song.” She said some people thought if your heartbroken plays were chosen to win at the City Dionysia festival, you’d get a brand-new goat as your prize. Or maybe that goat was sacrificed during the festival... maybe it was a bloody, beloved sort of goat-song, and the smoke of burning meat was offered to feed Dionysus himself, just the same way as the stories were meant to honor him. “Song for the prize of a goat” — “song for the sacrifice of a goat.” Those were some other possible translations, or something. 

Goats were both sacred to and hated by Dionysus the god, depending on which story’s getting told just now. Sometimes he disguised himself as a goat; other times he got pissed off because goats ate his holy grape vines. Dionysus — hunter and hunted, god of revelry, of drunkenness and theater. A god everybody knew was a contradiction, like the smile-screaming theater masks in Gamzee’s own Mirthful Gospels. Dionysus was called “the kindest and the cruelest” of the gods, sometimes; Dionysus was laughing and faithful, but could drive you out of your mind with a sour look. He would fight to the end for his followers, and among his beloved everybody became raw and released, dissolving society’s chains in a flood of wine. Euripi Maenad talked about Dionysus like she wished he’d turn up around here, wandering in their caves somewhere, and lead her away.

When Karkat thought about Dionysus’s satyr plays, he remembered jesters and snickering, well-intentioned jokes. Remembered a friend who had tried to make him laugh under awful circumstances, high out of his fucking mind on pan-rusting sopor slime. Guess who? When Karkat thought about the inherent contradiction in something — a goat — being both divine and despised, both hatefully loved and lovingly hated, he thought again and again about Gamzee Makara. And you know? _He hated it._ Of course he hated it. Because what was Gamzee to him, except someone he couldn’t help but love and hate? 

Karkat tried to stomp down the pity he still felt, sometimes, if he let his guard slip; he reminded himself that instead of trying to find him and have a real conversation about what had gone wrong between them, that clown, that ridiculous asshole, that randy, sycophantic old goat had... you know. What had Gamzee done, since getting out of his fridge? He’d given a profane, rambly speech at Dirk Strider’s funeral, and then he’d held on to Jane’s arm like he’d do anything to stay there. He’d cut in between Jane and _Karkat himself_ to defend her, to comfort her, and all while she was spouting such hateful, xenophobic bullshit... it was like Gamzee loved her, in an “I Hate You, Wink Wink” kind of way. Like he loved her despite everything, possibly more than he’d ever loved Karkat. Like he could look past what Jane was doing to their people, to trollkind, as long as she still ran a hand through his sticky hair every now and then, and —

And wanted him around, the way Karkat had always sworn he didn’t want him. Was that it? 

Would things have been different, if Karkat hadn’t let everyone chain Gamzee away in that fridge to begin with? If Karkat had worked a little harder to understand what was going on... whether there was any truth at all to the “secrets” Gamzee preached about their reality? Would things have been different, if Karkat had welcomed Gamzee back once he was finally free? Maybe he would’ve been there at the table with them all, then, painted cheek propped sloppily on his palm, nodding along as Euripi spoke. Would Karkat have taken him back, if he’d reached out honestly? Sometimes in his more self-righteous moods, he told himself yes of course he would have. Other times, Karkat remembered when Gamzee had tried to lick his feet in repentance — saying there had to be _some_ kinda way to make up with his “bro” — and Karkat had said there was no way at all. Gamzee didn’t know what he’d done wrong, after all; Gamzee hadn’t stumbled across the perfect words to say at the perfect time, and now so many stages of their lives were over.

Whatever this was, it sucked to live through.

Of course, it was all a tragedy.

Karkat told anyone even vaguely close to him that he didn’t want to talk to Gamzee Makara ever again — he’d told Gamzee himself not to even look in his direction, hazy vague eyes gone perpetually bloodshot from all that sopor abuse when they were young. But Karkat had a bounty out for Gamzee’s arrest, too — a traitor to their species, a criminal, a literal bootlicking lust-lackey to the enemy. And what was gonna happen, if anybody ever brought Gamzee in? He’d stand trial. Karkat had decided he’d stand trial, and of course that meant they’d talk again, if he ever got caught. Karkat both chased him away and dragged him home in makeshift chains. Karkat both told him to shut the fuck up forever and demanded he explain himself to a jury of his peers. Would he have done any of that, if Gamzee didn’t matter to him? If it hadn’t felt like a personal betrayal, seeing Gamzee a step behind Jane all the time, passing her pens from out of that wobbly codpiece of his and steadying her arm? Posing on his hands and knees so she could literally step on his back in _fucking bright red high heels_ to reach something too tall for her? 

Gamzee claimed to know the secrets behind so many things: the Vast Honk, his twofold Mirthful Messiahs, the Game that created and broke apart universes. Gamzee went from talking about the Dark Carnival to the One True Pen, from the Halls of Illusions to the supposedly endless benefits of remaining politically neutral. Karkat had never given a shit what he had to say about most things, before — he could admit that to himself, sometimes — even once they’d been officially moirails. So why did it bother him so much, to see that Jane didn’t seem to really give a shit what Gamzee had to say, either? There were more important people in Karkat’s life, nowadays. He was dealing with a rebellion... he was gonna bring Jane’s diabolically baking goods-themed empire down. His eyes shouldn’t linger on Gamzee, watching official broadcasts from Jane’s mansion, or office, or terrifyingly Condesce-adjacent battleship. Why did it matter, anymore? They had drifted so far away, they may as well not even fucking know each other. _But they did._

It was too complicated for Karkat to spell out completely — it was too stupid to put into words. Karkat would’ve had to write out a terrible thesis paper titled something like “What I Actually Think of Gamzee Makara” to get it all down, and he’d probably end up ranting way longer than Euripi Maenad spent describing her favorite Original Earth tragedies. And then he’d immediately use a smoking rocket launcher commandeered by the rebellion to blow that thesis paper to festive, clownish confetti. There ya go, Gamzee. What do you think of that?

Karkat was actually with Euripi and some of his other rebellion recruits when he got the call from Rose and Kanaya’s daughter, the new Vriska Maryam-Lalonde. She said she’d found Gamzee out on his own, in the wild, a ways off from his hate-girlfriend of ten-plus years’s ship. Vriska’d tried to fight him — tried to take him in, given that he was a Wanted Man and all — but Gamzee had been willing to come with her willingly. 

“Yeah, I told him you wanted him for a tribunal or something — trying to Sound All Menacing, you know,” Vriska drawled, over the phone. Congratulating herself. “And he just... held out his hands, like he expected me to cuff him. It was Incredibly Weird.”

And, “Bring him in, then, I guess,” Karkat choked out, feeling his fellow rebels’ eyes on him. Suddenly having a lot of trouble with the old “breathing” thing. “Blindfold him, before you get him anywhere near an entrance to the base. Or knock him out, I don’t fucking care.” Karkat swallowed. He wasn’t actually sure if he should say this next bit, but he went ahead and offered the words up, anyway. He’d told his followers that anyone who still liked Gamzee Makara was an idiot who didn’t respect themself; he’d watched them nod along, understanding his hate but standing on the edge of the story. _The rest of it._ They couldn’t hear the tragedy of things, in those words. 

“Make sure not to kill him,” Karkat said.

  1. _A High Priest and a Rebel Commander Walk into a Bar..._



Karkat Vantas wasn’t ready to see his ex-moirail again, not in person, not after the video he’d just watched. 

It had been posted online a few hours after Vriska Maryam-Lalonde found Karkat’s ex swaying around near some bushes, just... you know... hanging out with leaves caught in his tangled curls and an actual baby bottle in his hand. (That was part of Gamzee Makara’s new Church of Redemption, or something. You probably wouldn’t want to know. Something about the “nurturing warmth of Good Mother Redemption”; something about not ever needing to be alone, but being able to carry part of someone else inside you always. Karkat had researched, briefly, whether human milk would harm a troll, when he found out about it. Just... checking in. Even if Gamzee _was_ poisoning himself again, what did it matter to Karkat?)

Vriska had said Gamzee seemed dazed, when she found him, and muddy. Like he’d fallen down a hill, or something. Karkat hadn’t made much of that part, given that he’d been preparing for a battle and Gamzee often looked sort of like someone had recently kicked him down a hill... but then it came time to deal with the trial, and he saw the video. It had been recorded by one of Jane Crocker’s battleship waiters, supposedly, who‘d been lurking around with a tray of CrockerCorp pastries to wheel in for everyone before Jake broke the news of Jane’s dad’s death. That sort of thing didn’t exactly mean “Time for Cake!” even on one of Jane’s ships. And so the waiter had hung back. They’d slipped their phone out to record what came next, because they weren’t sure anyone else would believe them otherwise.

It was... a lot. It was Gamzee coaxing everybody to “honk” if they loved Jane, because damn holy fuck did he love her; it was Jane threatening to kill all the trolls in revenge for her father’s death, and Gamzee’s smile going strange. He told her that sort of talk sounded xenophobic and evil, my most bodacious of babes, lil mint choco chip, c’mon don’t be like that, in a way that meant they’d had this sort of conversation so many times before and Jane had never heard him. He reminded her that _he_ was a troll, see, like maybe he expected her to chuckle at the silly mistake. Oh, yes, right. I don’t hate trolls, because I love you! 

But Karkat could see, in the way Jane’s boiling eyes raked over Gamzee’s face, that his personhood — his identity as a troll — didn’t matter to her, not really. Karkat could see that Gamzee completely missed the honest disgust, the loathing in his partner’s eyes, and he tried to soothe her like they were all good. Like they were family, utterly trusting and worth so much the way he’d told himself a family should be. What’s a little murder between moirails? What can’t be forgiven; who can’t be redeemed? He booped Jane on the nose, and that was that. So many of the questions Karkat had been wanting to ask during Gamzee’s trial were answered, then — the questions he hadn’t even begun to know how to approach.

Gamzee couldn’t sleep without holding on to someone else... Gamzee had wanted so badly to believe that he could be okay. He’d wanted to find a way to exist in his own mind without sopor slime, but he still heard the voices from inside their game session — puppet voices, narrator voices, Angel of Double Death split-soul voices, Karkat didn’t honestly know — when he wasn’t careful. He was fighting them off; he wanted to be a better man, even with the nightmares and beyond-the-fabric-of-their-universe secrets, even without having a clear picture of everything being a “better man” could mean. Love was the most important thing, wasn’t it? Love was the most important thing? And Gamzee had thought he was getting better. He had just told Jane he loved her, so maybe he didn’t think she needed to hear it again, hear it just the right way. Spoken perfectly, so she’d be willing to believe him.

Jane had helped him. Having someone in his life had helped, Gamzee thought, even if what they’d had was just another taste of poison. Another drugged-up, no-nutrients-in-this-shit-at-all kind of pie. Jane was the Batterwitch, this new planet’s baking queen, so maybe it sort of made sense. They had fed each other's rotten places, and maybe "You Genuinely Disgust Me" had been treated like a love song. 

Gamzee said he’d do anything to keep Jane close. To stay on the ship. To keep guarding himself against the voices. Karkat wrinkled his nose, hearing all that — he’d do _anything_ , would he? Anything? Would he have let all the other trolls die quietly? Of course Karkat’s stomach turned; of course he groaned, loud enough that his aide jumped a little watching over his shoulder. This was why Karkat made a point to think of Gamzee as “bubbling, feculent clownflesh,” lately. This was why he told himself it was alright the first words he offered his ex-moirail here on Earth C had been heckling, when Gamzee’d tried to read a letter Dirk Strider left behind for him to present at his funeral. The letter had been ruined, of course: a mistake, maybe even an understandable one. And Gamzee expected friends to forgive each other’s mistakes... Gamzee had thought Karkat was teasing him for fun, and tried to make nice. 

All those years together, and Gamzee and Jane obviously didn’t know each other at all. He’d looked at her too tenderly, like he just _knew_ she would remember she didn’t really hate trolls soon enough and maybe smack herself on the forehead. Oh, geez! Such a scatterbrain. Gamzee seemed sure Jane wouldn’t be capable of anything truly cruel — Gamzee seemed sure everything was gonna be alright, though yeah of course it was sad beyond sad that Jane just lost her human Lusus. And that was why he looked like he’d just bellyflopped into some mud and been rolled unceremoniously down a hill: because he had been. Gamzee’d been banished from Jane Crocker’s ship, minutes before Vriska found him. Grass-stained and bruised and dripping milk — milk like Dionysus’s worshippers could draw out of that old Original Earth, supposedly, along with honey, hanging sticky and impossible between their searching fingers. Or maybe nothing like _that_ milk at all?

Karkat wanted to look Gamzee dead in the vacant, hollow eyes and tell him he was a slippery traitorous idiot who was going to be in a lot of pain very soon. After the trial. He wanted to see him squirm. But more than that, maybe, he wanted to scrub it all clean and start over. How hard would it have been for Gamzee to come find him and try to talk things out after being released from the fridge? How hard would it have been for him to lift Gamzee out of the fridge himself, when they were both young and Gamzee’d been so eerily thin it was like his bones were made of driftwood? Something washed up on the beach where he used to wait for his missing seagoat Lusus, night after night after night. 

They were both idiots. Not that Karkat would ever say any of this aloud. _They were both idiots_ , and Karkat’s aide was saying, “It’s almost time, Commander. Everyone’s pretty much ready for the trial... you just have to pick the execution method, okay?”

“What?”

“Uh. You have to pick what the punishment’s gonna be.”

“Already done, obviously.”

The video Karkat had just watched was titled “HIGH PRIEST MAKARA: DUMPED” on some sites, and “CROCKERCORP SAYS GENOCIDE” on others. He had frozen the video on Gamzee’s stricken face, as he was dragged away by Jane’s guards, begging to keep the voices out. Back when it mattered, Karkat knew he hadn’t listened the way he should have when Gamzee talked about _voices_ , either. Callings. Sacred prophesy. Karkat had believed Gamzee’s religion was a joke, and his Godtier title was a joke, and he... living, breathing, laugh-sobbing clown that he was... was practically a joke, too. A “goofy loveable bullshit clown,” like he’d told John Egbert, once. It was easy for Karkat to explain why he hated Gamzee, but it had never been easy to admit how...

Fuck.

“Goofy loveable bullshit clown.” Did Karkat have to spell it out any clearer? _They weren’t friends anymore, though_. It was humiliating to know him, especially since he’d been Jane’s floppy, obedient arm candy. And this whole “baby bottle in the codpiece” thing? Not a good look, but definitely a complicated one, as Rose might say. Diplomatically, back when she and Jane were still on speaking terms. But... there were so many ways this could have gone differently. So many ways Karkat wished he’d _been there_ better, when it counted. If they had been real, together... if they’d been honest...

Karkat had sent Equius to get rid of his “goofy loveable bullshit clown” friend, before Gamzee’d ever actually killed anyone. No, he hadn’t forgotten. He had told himself that Gamzee killed “half his friends” so many times that it nearly felt true, but... huh. Gamzee killed the people Karkat sent after him. Karkat wrote him off as a lost cause — decided he was good and dead — before any blood was fucking spilt. 

Of course it mattered who told the story: no narrative voice could be an objective force, sure. Dionysus’s followers talked about his return to Thebes way differently than Pentheus, who was trying to drive the god away. That was in _The Bacchae_ , by the Original Earth playwright Euripides. Apparently. 

Karkat had decided a long time ago that if he executed the High Fucking Priest Makara himself, he’d use his own sickles. From when they were in the Game, see. That would be a weapon Gamzee’d recognize, and he would realize how far they’d come. How broken they were, and that there was no going back. Maybe he’d finally get it, before he died. Sometimes, Karkat wondered if Gamzee even knew who had sent Equius to deal with him.

Did Karkat want him to finally get it, before he died? Euripi had mentioned that some people thought the goats sacrificed during City Dionysia festivals were taken out for sins they couldn’t understand, and so it was expected you’d feel sort of bad for them. So many questions, in their tipsy sideways eyes. 

They were holding Gamzee’s trial in the part of their underground system that looked the most like a theater, with slithering mossy walls and a billowing echo. It was a deep howling space, and there were crevices carved in the walls already like seats, stretching up and up. Usually, they used that space for storage, but it had been all cleared out, now. Gamzee sat cross-legged on the wet cold stone, hands bound in front of him with pieces torn off of his own fluttery purple ribbon-cape. It wasn’t a very secure hold: of course an adult highblood troll could snap something like that without thinking. But Gamzee sat painfully still, head bowed beatifically, and the underground air was stale all around them. 

Everyone took their seats, and Karkat thought... again... about ancient plays performed on that Original Earth. 

From what Euripi Maenad had told him, it sounded like so often it was good intentions that brought their heroes to the pit, then, too. Trying to break curses, or find love; trying to avenge someone they cared about, or protect their families. But the threads got tangled, and it was natural to scream. But the plays were a ceremonial glimpse of unraveling, and all things came undone in time. Gamzee and Karkat had come undone... all their friends had come undone, and nothing could ever be like it was. Not for Karkat and Dave Strider, not for John and Roxy, not for anyone. Sometimes it seemed like people were getting a “happy ending,” but they would taste tragedy, too, at some point. Dionysus warned his followers about comedy and tragedy, both, in his rituals. He gave them a chance to scream together.

Karkat stood in front of Gamzee Makara here, in the theater, before their waiting crowd. He imagined what it might be like to wear masks together, like the actors in Euripi’s old, old plays. Maybe masks were more honest, in a way: they told the audience exactly what you were supposed to be feeling, without room for doubt or betrayal. Karkat had no idea what his face might have looked like, staring down at Gamzee, now. Was he horrified? Was he furious? Was he about to throw up all over Gamzee’s curling jester shoes? He thought of Gamzee like a figure in a play, for a moment. He’d been after a family, but he’d ended up with something rotten; he’d been after redemption, but he didn’t understand what he’d done wrong in the first place. He was bumbling through the motions, here, shoveling piles and piles of dirt to fill a hole he couldn’t find.

The High Priest was still wearing his blindfold, and the whole internet knew he had no home to go back to. Gamzee said, “Karkat?” in that mushy lilt of his Karkat knew people found annoying, sometimes, but that he... 

You know. He’d always tried not to like. Karkat was a tragedy, too. 

“I’m here,” Karkat said. “We’re all here. Your trial’s about to begin, asshole.”

Gamzee snickered, like Karkat had just told him an inside joke. Something funny from long ago, when they were different people. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know why the actual fuck you sound like a trial could possibly be a good thing for you,” Karkat huffed. The exhaustion and hate in his voice were so obvious, he knew. But what else could his audience hear? “I have my sickles ready for you, when this is over. We already know you’re guilty: just like the trials on Alternia, remember?”

Gamzee thought about that, hands limp in front of him, mud-splattered and sticky, hair falling in his face. For a second, it didn’t look like he was going to answer, but when he did his voice came out soft and longing, so different from the playful way he preached. “I’ve been all motherfucking thinking and thinking on it for sweeps now, but I still don’t know exactly what I did that you can’t get your forgiveness on to. Why there’s nothing I can do, for us to be...” Gamzee swallowed. “It’s a trial. You’re gonna tell me my charges, brother — not brother. You’re gonna tell me, _Karkat_ , and it doesn’t really matter if I die here. It’s like I told your boy Dave: this isn’t the real show.” His smile was a little mischievous now. Guilty and knowing and sloppy, with too many teeth. “This world‘s not real. But still, I gotta know... I didn’t think you’d ever talk to me again, br — Karkat. But then, all this trial noise? I am motherfucking blessed.”

“By Mother Redemption?” Karkat spat back. “Blessed by the Mirthful Messiahs, or fucking Lord English? What the hell, Gamzee.”

“By you.”

  1. _Courtroom-Adjacent Theater... and Then, Curtains_



“Uh. Okay. Now _that’s_ bullshit.”

“I want to motherfucking hear what you’ve got to say, my bes — Karkat. Let’s get this good catharsis going!”

“You want to know the charges against you? You want to know _everything_?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“We could be here for hours. Days. I can’t afford to spend _actual days_ yelling at the self-righteous, milk-guzzling scum of Earth C, can I? The rotten sore stuck right between the toes of trollkind, seeping fucking pus into our collective socks —”

“Whoa. You still got it!”

“I have an army to lead, Gamzee — a world to save, from _your_ ‘Lil Mint Choco Chip.’ I don’t care if you think this means we’re finally ‘kissing and making up’ like at one of your disgusting church services. _We’re not going to be okay_ , and if I see so much as a dribble of milk on your tongue, I swear I’m going to lose it.”

“Say what you gotta say. I’m listening.”

“We aren’t going to be okay, Gamzee. Not ever again.”

“I heard you. I... I know.”

And so Karkat Vantas spoke their tragedy — he brought their wicked history to life until the plot threads had been mangled apart and stitched clumsily back together, until he’d contradicted and reframed his memory, until he’d pried up every floorboard and kicked around the dried-out husks and moldy severed limbs waiting underneath. He accused Gamzee of things they both knew went down differently, and then carefully walked the words back. He confessed, and he berated, and he winced at the explanations behind Gamzee’s splattered-together and criss-crossing scars. Karkat asked horrifying questions and received horrifying answers. He asked when Gamzee was in complete control — when he knew for sure he was pulling his own puppet strings — and Gamzee said, “Never,” like it was a horror story and a wicked miracle, both.

None of this was going to be recorded on any rebel’s phone; none of this was going to turn up on the internet soonish with a title like “REBEL COMMANDER DESCRIBES PUTRID STINK OF CLOWN EX FOR FIVE MINUTES STRAIGHT AND THEN CALLS HIM ‘LOVEABLE’” or “CONSPIRACY THEORISTS VINDICATED: HIGH PRIEST KNOWS TRUE IDENTITY OF LORD ENGLISH/WHY WORLD HAS BEEN RAINING GHOSTS!!!” Obviously. I mean, hopefully no one in Karkat’s rebellion would make such a stupid mistake, right? No one would betray their hideout like that, and everyone had to know Jane Crocker would pay attention to any headlines about Gamzee, whether she’d banished him from her battleship or not. Maybe she expected him to be waiting patiently for her, like a rag doll dropped on the driveway. 

Karkat spoke until his throat was aching, and he didn’t even get snarky when Gamzee accidentally slipped into his drawling High Priest voice. They both couldn’t remember everything that they had been, and they’d both wanted to belong with someone so badly they bent their moral codes. The words didn’t fall together perfectly right, and there were pieces left out, sure — let’s be honest, they had a long-ass, rambling history that couldn’t agree with itself sometimes, subjective as memory. But for the course of the trial, they gave it a go. The audience had questions for Gamzee, too, and he answered most of them; someone had a gavel, and about midway through a troop of rebels wandered away to get assorted beverages all around. Karkat got Gamzee to drink a cup of water, then; the High Priest accepted it without question. It could have been poisoned, but he didn’t even seem to think of that.

When Gamzee cried this time — it started after Karkat said he wished Dave had told him about Lil Cal talking to Gamzee... said he should have realized about Lord English’s influence, and Aranea Serket’s influence, and Kurloz’s and, oh, just everything — it was like an echo of the wailing, honking sobs he’d offered up when he’d first been freed from Jane’s old fridge. Or John’s fridge? The truth was like Play-Doh, sometimes, and Gamzee cried silently now. Karkat only noticed because he was shaking, that grape jelly fake Godtier costume he seemed honestly afraid to take off suddenly too thin for the cold. Karkat said that addiction was a disease, and Gamzee deserved help treating it, yeah; Karkat said that it had been so long, he’d almost completely forgotten it had been _Vriska Serket_ who killed Tavros Nitram. Vriska, and she wasn’t like... being puppeted by an inter-dimensional death-angel, or anything. Kinda made a guy think.

Karkat untied Gamzee’s blindfold, first, and then the super-tight cloth from around his wrists. He assured the rest of his forces that he’d hide the new Batterwitch’s chief clown’s eyes, again, before they even left the trial room... but for now, right here, maybe he wanted to see Gamzee’s expression properly. He had promised this person who used to be his friend that things would never be okay again, and maybe that was true — they were a tragedy, after all, in a story without any happy endings — but after the ritual catharsis ended there could be funny shows, too. The laugh-screaming theater masks. The swaggering burlesque satyr plays, after a tragedy performed at the yearly City Dionysia festival. You know. And some people said the satyr plays were full of mysteries, themselves, full of riddles and acrobatics. An even more ancient clownish truth to come. 

Gamzee scooted a little closer to his ex-moirail once the makeshift cuffs came off, and Karkat found himself reaching up and smudging a few of the tears off his face. Smearing the already-ruined clown paint there. They weren’t here to kiss and make up, of course. Karkat had guaranteed there could be no redemption. This was such a public display... there were so many things wrong with it, so many reasons why he shouldn’t want this clown to feel safe in his arms. This wanted man; this criminal; this traitor; this stranger. But when someone near the back of the room whistled, Karkat snapped, “Watch it! This isn’t for you!” over his shoulder, and when Gamzee whispered, “Would you take a... I dunno, a fucking hug? Or something? Do you think I’m starting to understand now?” Karkat pulled him close. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it — or maybe he should’ve done it years ago — but let’s say... here, as the curtains swung shut on a rehashing of all their tragedies... he did.

Karkat still remembered what it had been like when Gamzee’d gone limp and trusting in his arms, way back when, in a timeline John Egbert had mostly retconned or whatever the actual fuck. Didn’t matter: it was still there. Gamzee’d blinked the rage from his eyes, suddenly _really seeing_ Karkat again, his soul like a storm shuddering apart into murky, swaying waters. Gamzee had shaken off his murdermirth, accepting Karkat’s pale-love invitation, and it had been so cold pulled against his chest. Karkat had papped Gamzee’s back, feeling his too-skinny spine through his shirt. Karkat had held him as long as he needed to be held, and he’d thought, “Finally,” with far too much of his stupid heart. 

The High Fucking Priest was cold, still, and his heartbeat was an unsteady, stumbling thing. He was softer around the edges, now, and taller, with rancid unwashed plot armor he’d been wearing for far too long. It was the codpiece, it turned out: Gamzee couldn’t be killed while wearing that fucking ridiculous codpiece. Of course, it would have to be something like that. Literal plot armor, just another case of the universe shitting on Karkat’s proverbial grave, mocking him.

Would Karkat draw his sickles, when Gamzee stopped rubbing his back, stopped murmuring wetly, earnestly into his ear? A reclaimed goat... a sacrifice?

“Don’t go back to Jane. Don’t do _just anything_ for her.”

“I won’t. I won’t.”

“She doesn’t love you —”

“I think I know that, now, good and true as I used to know the old gospels.”

“— and she wants to kill me. Kill all of us.”

“I mean, most of my friends’ve all gone and said they want to kill me at least once, you know? I don’t usually get to fucking believing in it. Jane, though... shit. It’s a motherfucking shame.”

“Finally.” 

Finally, again. It didn’t make up for the years of intentional, devoted-lover obliviousness, but it was something, at least. It was a change.

Some narrators would want you to believe it wasn’t possible — some narrators would scoff at the idea of release, even if there can’t ever be redemption. Other narrators would want you to believe redemption is only a state of mind, or maybe they’d put way more kissing here. You know what? We all have our agendas. If you can’t trust the narrator, what the actual holy/unholy contradictory motherfuck are you supposed to trust? The staring blank page, maybe. The potential, the possibility. The promised apotheosis at the end of everything, though I can’t offer any promises that ascension won’t make us all cry. 

So I’ll write it again, like it was written before but different, this time, because we’re all different this time. Some of the words are turned around a little; Gamzee’s hair is sticky with all sorts of things, but not blood, I think you’ll find:

And the Bard of Rage so embraced the Knight of Blood, and in each other’s arms they were only people, trolls that could barely guess at what all could fucking happen once they took their final bows and the play was finally over. And with back rubs and heartbroken, messy murmuring, the Bard did promise he was leaving the tyrant Jane Crocker well and true, and he’d never actually wanted to be politically neutral. He’d wanted to be loved, and forgiven. And the Knight looking upon his Bard did promise that someone would be able to love his juggalo ass — and I say it was true that someone had always loved him, even if it was only an onlooker to their story. A reader, or a narrator; a stranger or a friend. Even if it was only a Knight who had never had any fucking idea how to love him well. And the Bard in totally accepting that he was not absolved, only wanted, said, Is my trial over, for now? 

And the Knight said onto the bard, Yeah, I guess so. You need a shower. If you take your plot armor off here, I can pretty much guarantee I won’t let anyone murder you yet. Deal?

You got a motherfucking deal. 

**Author's Note:**

> This author’s note contains repeated and sincere thanks for reading (thank you!!!) and a list of references (second large paragraph down)... but I should hang a “TW: mentioned possible abuse between characters” sign above the first large paragraph just in case. So. Warning. Please be safe. 
> 
> Okay, here goes...
> 
> 1\. Thank you very very much for reading!!! I’m incredibly nervous to post this honestly — please know I’m sorry for anything and everything I might’ve gotten wrong. I.... have so many feelings.... and I tried to make something hopefully fun venting some of that???? Full disclosure, the thing I was most horrified by in the Homestuck Epilogues (what’s discussed by Tavros Crocker and John right before the kidnapping attempt) was confirmed to not be true/to only be a super dark (and let’s just say it literally made me cry) joke in a Twitter thread by Jennifer Giesbrecht... thank you, Jennifer Giesbrecht.... omfg. Honestly, thank you. Here’s the Twitter thread if anybody wants to see: https://mobile.twitter.com/AnarchoBoog/status/1120380742742110208 So, I don’t address that at all in my fic here. If anyone’s wondering why it doesn’t come up, this is why I felt like it was okay not to mess with it. (And here, I take a deep breath. The wind seems to whisper, “Thank you, Jennifer Giesbrecht.” I hope it's okay to pass around that Twitter thread. If not, please just let me know.)
> 
> 2\. On an easier topic, I reference/cite a lot of stuff in this, including “The Bacchae” by Euripides (that’s where Dionysus is described as “the kindest and the cruelest” of the gods in regard to humans... I also took Chahut's OC descendant's name from Euripides lol), Wikipedia articles about the Dionysia festivals/related subjects, a paper called “Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual” by Walter Burkert, “Dionysos: Exciter to Frenzy” by Vikki Bramshaw (where it describes goats being both an embodiment of and an “enemy” to Dionysus/a fitting symbol of his duality and contradiction), a BBC article called “The Vocabularist: 'Tragedy' originally meant 'goat-song,’” an article by Bruce MacLennan called “Background Information on the City Dionysia”... hehe. Thank you. Hopefully I did okay. Dionysus... I love Dionysus. 
> 
> Whatever else it may be, this was written with a lot of love. I really appreciate you reading it, and I hope you’re staying safe/doing well!


End file.
